As soon as I heard about this story I figured there was going to be a lot of scare-mongering news coverage about all the scary things waiting to ambush you in public restrooms. But in fact, most of what I read was quite reasonable and gave this well-done study a fair shake. This study, from …
Quick post here. Check out the story from ABC news (Australia, that is): Indoor ecology – RN Future Tense – 24 November 2011. Their summary: We’re used to hearing about threats to our outdoor environment. But we rarely think about some of the challenges that we face in our indoor environment. A growing number of …
Got this email from Jordan Peccia at Yale who is working on a report regarding sampling microbes in air. If you are working on sampling biological material from air please consider filling out the template and sending it to Jordan. Thanks Based on the Sloan Sponsored Indoor Microbiome Sampling Workshop held last spring, Jayne Morrow …
Listening to this podcast this morning reminded me that we hadn’t yet made a plug for Rob Dunn’s awesome citizen science project “Domestic Biomes: The Wild Life of Your Home”. This project is collecting samples of people’s homes (and the people themselves) from all across the country, in both urban and rural environments. The samples …
After reading this story today about Serratia marcescens I thought it would be interesting to have the occasional post highlighting a particular organism found in the built environment. Sort of like a baseball card collection of microbes. Name: Serratia marcescens Location: commonly found in showers, toilets, tiles etc. Fairly ubiquitous in damp environments. Description: rod-shaped, …
New video from Institute of Medicine on “What you need to know about infectious disease” which is useful and fortunately includes some information about things other than infectious diseases. It is based on this booklet. I note – it is heavy on those with apparent XY chromosome status, but maybe next time they will include …
We’ve posted a couple of times in the past about the large collection of papers we’ve assembled on Mendeley relating to the microbiology of the built environment. See here and here. Because the utility of a large collection is in part dependent on the organization and tagging, we’ve created a couple of short tutorial videos …
When I think of things that problematically attach themselves the bottom of boats, I usually think of barnacles. But bacterial biofilms can also be a problem, and can make the substrate more attractive to larger organisms. I saw an interesting story today on work focused on developing anti-fouling systems that aren’t toxic to the environment. …
We should have a recurring series on overblown stories about the microbiology of the built environment, particularly on findings that “X” common item harbors bacteria that might kill you. So far in this vein we’ve discussed dishwashers, money, fast-food playgrounds, hospital curtains, HVAC systems, hospital scrubs, and pillows. Some of these are good stories, but …
Not microbiology here per se but good to see that on the building side of things there is continuous effort to improve the sharing of information and that “openness” is considered important. See Common BIM Files Now Available to Help Verify Exchange of Building Information | Whole Building Design Guide for more information.